India's Right to Preemptive strike!

Preemptive strike is waged in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived inevitable offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (allegedly unavoidable) war before that threat materializes. Preemptive war is often confused with the term preventive war. While the latter is generally considered to violate international law, and to fall short of the requirements of a just war, preemptive wars are more often argued to be justified or justifiable

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although international law categorically rejects Preemptive war

what are the key enemy terrotories for india while attacking and why?
in case india needs to defend what would be the key areas?
whats the operational doctrine of such wars?

With countries that do not respect our position in the sub-continent, it is farcical to maintain a restrained, so-called "responsible" higher-ground, when faced with a security challenge. Any commitments made on avoiding preemptive war, or first use of nuclear weapons, only undermines our position in the sub-continent, which is near-unassailable, and gives confidence to belligerent neighbours to undertake misadventures.

1. The key enemy targets will always remain supply lines which we predict (out of past battle knowledge) will be used by them, these could end up being within enemy territory.

2. If India needs to defend itself (against a preemptive war),

a.The best way forward is to carefully distribute resources (ordinance, and supplies (munition and oil)), and avoid nucleating them. Any successful war machine has a decentralized resource pool.

b.Intelligence: the most powerful weapon in a war. Our intelligence network must be active and aggressively rooted within enemy territory, and a dependable milsat (military imaging satellite) network must be built.

3. I don't think preemptive war has an rigid operational doctrine, since, preemptive war in itself is a very ad hoc thing. Its doctrine is drawn almost instantly, and specific to the conflict at hand.

If India has to conduct Pre-emptive strikes on our western neighbor she shall have to target three types of targets in order to be reasonably sure of having decapitated the enemy .

1)The Command, control and communication apparatus of Pakistan must be struck, this shall cut the information chain and cause confusion while letting us prepare for retaliation(which will come).This shall also hurt morale immensely in th enemy nation.

2)Logistically important targets like fuel and ammo dumps, repair yards, bridges, power stations, T.V stations and other telecommunication infrastructure.This helps to stop/ delay reinforcements and reduces the enemy potential to fight a prolonged conflict.

3)Tactically important targets like PAF airfields,Radars and missile launchers(the latter shall require human intel to be extraordinarily strong to let us find the TEL's).
Important PAF bases
Source for picture:Pakistani Air Bases

Is it possible for us as a nation of taking out all these targets at once-YES
Is it going to be costly- prohibitively so both in lives lost and money
Assets that can be used- first a wave of LACM'S to target radars and SAM sites then send in the sukhois and mirages.
Will we still face retaliation-Yes both from outside and inside, Pakistan has the unique ability to retaliate against india by activating sleeper jihadi cells across the length and breadth of India. the first strike in any future indo-pak war will not be an F-16 firing missiles at a mig it will most probably be a car packed with explosives blowing up near western command headquarters in khadki pune.

What areas would India need to defend?
The same areas that we attack, just as Pakistan is vulnerable so are we,; any nation is vulnerable to attacks on bridges,fuel dumps, and telecoms infrastructure. we will need a robust and interlinked network of modern radar and SAM's to defend ourself.

First question is what are we pre-empting? A terror attack or an imminent full fledged war?
The more likely scenario is the former. Pakistan has realized from past experience that waging a full scale war with India is not possible. That's the reason why it did a Kargil. Even that failed miserably. So terror remains the only weapon of war for them.

How are we going to preempt a terror attack of the kind seen in Mumbai? Well intelligenceis the key. Second if we decide to then strikes on terror camps. Will that be limited or will the scope widen due to Pak retaliation is another point.

Ultimately it will lead to a large scale war and then all the points laid down by bengalraider come into being.

But apart from that, we most definitely have to take out the nukes they have. Easier said than done but it is a must as if we are able to destroy a vast chunk of their war making ability, they will use nukes.

I would add a good preemptive strike could be a cyberattack. Cyberattack would be a perfect way to start a preemptive strike as Russia demonstrated against Georgia. A cyberattack coordinated properly could cripple the banking system and the Pakistani stock market sending the country into a state of Chaos, a cyberattack would also have a deep pschological impact since the common man would be impacted it would take the jihad out out of them. Once this demoralizing strike is complete a military attack many not even be necessary and if there is then Pakistan would purely playing a defensive role. With India's IT talent i am sure units could be setup quickly and they would be very cost effective in terms of the damage they would inflict.

I don't think a preemptive strike can be limited to a psychological win. It's like a bowler bowling a beauty that misses the outside edge of a batsman and wins a moral psycoligical victory. But the batsman survives and spanks the next ball to the fence.

Cyber attack can only be in conjunction with a lethal strike. Not a stand alone.

A preemptive strike in case with Pakistan can only be a preemptive war. There cannot be a stand alone strike that cripples it and we can heave a sigh of relief. They will come back with all that is left with them. So if there is any indication of Pakistan readying for war against India or a massive terror attack against India, then India has to launch and massive strike.

The most important target as far as I am concerned is the nukes. When it comes to it, Pakistan will not blink an eye before using it. So we have to strike all the facilities that gives it the capability to launch a nuke attack. Pakistans trigger happy generals and our value for life means we cannot launch an attack that will not ensure the complete destruction of Pakistans nukes.

there is one massive problem in Pre-empting a terror strike , in most cases the terror strike will be conducted by a sleeper cell that is already whithin the boundaries of india(or a third nation ); it may also involve more than one cell operating independently from the other(the 9/11 hijackers did not know about the four teams for the four planes), also pre-empting a war with pakistan is tricky proposition due to the Latter's reliance on asymmetric warfare; as i have said earlier the first pakistani attck will not be an F-16 firing missiles at a Mig it is more likely to be a jehadi blowing up a car bomb outside western command(or any other command HQ). also in case of terror strike the secrecy is very high in most cases as with the mumbai attacks the attackers do not know their final destination till the final moments, a deeply embedded intelligence appartus is required to pre-empt a terror attack as yusuf has already pointed out.This si not to say that terror attacks cannot be pre-empted they can however the level of intelligence gathering and speciallly human intel must undergo a massive upgradation to make that possible.

Preemptive attack need not be massive in scale, it can be surgical/focussed with the intent of giving an immense psychological blow to enemy planning a terror attack against us, it may include counter-espionage, assasination of key figures, sabotage/destruction of enemy logistical/training/planning bases through covert means e.g. specifically targetting their money raising in public places, and distrupting their rallies/meetings. We must clearly send a message that India is watching continuously, and no enemy is safe, even in their own turf.

Amrit, what you are saying can only be covert ops, Mossad style. There cannot be surgical strikes as our neighbor is very unpredictable with a short fuse. They will retaliate. So even to preempt a terror attack, India will be forced to preempt a war itself.

2) Command and communication facilities to break chain of command and create confusion and install fear among ground units, again using cruise missiles.

Then the IAF can go in with SU30MKIs, Jaguars and Mirage 2000 to cripple their war waging capabilities and disable nuke storage facilities that should be completely suppressed with fuel air warheads.

However, having said this, it will all be ineffective as long as we don't have highly credible intelligence. Also, we need to have some sort ABM system in place for protection against their cruise and ballistic missiles and an excellent AEW/AWACS capability.All our crucial air assets should also be safely hidden in hardened underground bunkers in forward bases that are highly vulnerable.

Preemptive attack need not be massive in scale, it can be surgical/focussed with the intent of giving an immense psychological blow to enemy planning a terror attack against us, it may include counter-espionage, assasination of key figures, sabotage/destruction of enemy logistical/training/planning bases through covert means e.g. specifically targetting their money raising in public places, and distrupting their rallies/meetings. We must clearly send a message that India is watching continuously, and no enemy is safe, even in their own turf.

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No Indian politicians have the Guts to do it in Past or Present may be in future generation it is slightly possible